Brownie Radio in the '40's

[portobob]

Harry Caray did both the Browns and Cardinal games for a period of time but before he did, two announcers, France Laux and Johnny O'Hara did the games back in the 1940's. They did a creditable job in spite of France's nasally voice. The only problem was that when the Browns were out of town, they used to recreate the games from a ticker tape.This presented some hysterical situations due to the slow, sparse input they used. Once they gave the hitters average and the results of his previous at bats, there was nothing but dead air......no talking. A hit for the Brownies produced "canned" crowd noise and a "clunk" that indicated a batted ball. More ofter than not they would lose the ticker tape connection and have to improvise things. If, during the lost connection either team had a big inning, they had to do a catch up effort that crammed a whole lot of activity into a very short time. This was really funny because they tended to get game results out of sequence and they would say things like...'Kreevich hit a home run inning before last that gave the Brownies a lead for awhile' but now the Sox have loaded the bases and errrrrrrr...that does it for the bottom of the fifth' . Funny stuff.

[Brownieand45sfan]

The following article, "St. Louis Cardinals' Radio History" has a really complete list of the Cardinal broadcast teams from '26 to present. But there's nary a mention of the good ol Brownies:

http://www.stlradio.com/articles-stlcards.htm

We should do a list ourselves. Can anybody remember a (broadcast play-by-play) team and a year? Did the Brownie's borrow the Cardinals announcers? In what year did the Cardinals broadcasters start to go on the road? Portabob, what years exactly did the Caray-O'Hara team broadcast?

[portobob]

Besides France Laux and Johnny O'Hara and Harry the only ones I can remember are Buddy Blatner and Dizzy Dean. Buddy left and went with the networks Game of the Week broadcast. By the way, Buddy couldn't stand working with Dizzy. Buddy was very thorough with stats and technical info but Dizzy was always trying to upstage him with wacky stuff like mispronunciations of players names etc. ....eg "Gutt Ridge" for Don Gutteridge. Buddy's book exposed his real feelings about Diz. AS far as the years the guys worked the games, I can't remember. At this point, my memory of the '40's and 50's is a blur.

[BaseballHistorian]

1953 - Bill Durney (KMOX), Buddey Blattner (KXOK)
1952 - Blattner, Dizzy Dean (WIL)
1951 - Blattner, Howard Williams (KWK)
1950 - Bill Snyder, Les Carmichael (WEW/KWK)
1949 - John O'Hara, Tom Dailey (WEW/KWK)
1948 - France Laux (WIL)
1947 - O'Hara, Dean (WIL)
1946 - O'Hara, Dean (WIL) // Harry Caray, Gabby Street (WTMV/WEW)
1945 - O'Hara, Laux (WEW/WTMV) // Caray, Street (WIL)
1944 - O'Hara, Dean (WEW/WTMV)
1943 - O'Hara, Dean (KWK) // Laux, Ron Rawson (KXOK)
1942 - O'Hara, Dean
1941 - Dizzy Dean
1940 - Laux (KMOX) // O'Hara, Johnny Neblett (KWK) // Gabby Street, Alex Buchan (KXOK)

1939 - France Laux, Cy Casper (KMOX) // O'Hara, Jim Bottomley (KWK)
1938 - France Laux, Jim Alt (KMOX) // O'Hara, Allan Anthony (KWK)
1937 - Laux, Alt (KMOX) // O'Hara, Anthony, Ray Schmidt (KWK)
1936 - Laux (KMOX) // O'Hara, Schmidt (KWK)
1935 - Laux (KMOX) // Bob Thomas (KWK) // Neil Norman (WIL)
1934 - Laux (KMOX) // Bob Thomas, Ray Schmidt (KWK)
1933 - Laux
1932 - Laux
1931 - Laux
1930 - Laux
1929 - Laux
1928 -
1927 - Garnett Marks (KMOX)

This is what I have from my records scraped together from The Sporting News and other broadcasting/advertising periodicals.

Of course, as you may know, the Browns broadcasts of later years went out over a broadcasting network considerably smaller than the Cardinals. This was no small part of the disparity between the two teams when Bill Veeck was in town.

One of the more amusing tibits from the era revolved around the Anheuser-Busch purchase of the Cardinals and the infamous (aborted) decision to change the name Sportsman's Park to Budweiser Stadium. As the Browns were sponsored by rival Falstaff, some critics noted, it was hardly fair that Browns fans would tune in to an introduction along the lines of "broadcasting from Budweiser Stadium, Falstaff brings you..." :laugh

[Brownieand45sfan]

Interesting. So the Cards and Browns had the same broadcast team (with the exception of third Cards' broadcaster Ray Schmidt for one year) through the end of the '46 season?

Must have been tougher for broadcasters in those days to have to know thoroughly both Leagues. Also, to the extent that the broadcasters in those days practiced a "homer" broadcasting style, I wonder which team they rooted for in '44?

It's also interesting that unless there was a misprint on the St. Louis Radio History site, there was no Cards broadcast at all in '53 but there was a Browns! Maybe that had something to do with the changeover in Cards' team ownership.

[BaseballHistorian]

In 1953 Caray and Mancuso were doing the Cardinals games for WIL, sponsored through the season by Greisedieck Bros. as usual - despite the purchase of the team prior to the season by Anheuser-Busch*. In 1954 the sponsorship contract ended with GB and Busch could begin to advertise his own product over the team's airwaves.

*In the hubbub over the brewery's purchase of a baseball team, and how that team could then be used to vault them over other industry competition, A-B supporters pointed at 1953 saying in effect: "How could we use the team to get ahead when a rival was sponsoring the broadcasts for our first season..."

[Brownieand45sfan]

VERY interesting bit of history. Many thanks...

.

*In the hubbub over the brewery's purchase of a baseball team, and how that team could then be used to vault them over other industry competition, A-B supporters pointed at 1953 saying in effect: "How could we use the team to get ahead when a rival was sponsoring the broadcasts for our first season..."

[Brownieand45sfan]

Harry Caray did both the Browns and Cardinal games for a period of time (snip)
If this is true, shouldnt his tenure as Browns announcer be mentioned in his Hall of Fame bio?:
http://www.baseballhalloffame.org/hofers_and_honorees/frick_bios/caray_harry.htm
Let's start a boomlet!@

[Sports Fan 07]

Real good article here about Dizzy Dean's announcing days: http://curtsmith.mlblogs.com/archives/2006/02/dizzy_dean_easi.html

BTW, as one of the few here old enough to remember both the Dizzy Dean/Buddy Blattner Game of the Week and then the Dizzy Dean/Pee Wee Reese Game of the Week I MUCH preferred Dean & Reese. After Blattner got the axe he was extremely bitter and blasted Dean every chance he got. Blattner's extreme bitterness sullied his reputation and was seen as sour grapes. Blattner's is FOS with this statement in this article: "In Pee Wee [Reese] they got a better player, but lesser announcer [than himself]," Blattner said. I'd LOVE to have the tapes of the games Diz and Pee Wee did starting in 1959. Those are still my favorite TV baseball broadcasts ever, and those two are still my favorite TV broadcasting duo of all time. Those two really had fun and made the game incredibly fun and interesting. There would be an old third base or first base coach standing out there and either Diz or Pee Wee would say "Let me tell you a story about that guy." And it was always great. Each weekend it was a happening.

[Michael Green]

Smith told more of the Blattner story in Voices of the Game (he may have told it in America's Dizzy Dean--I am not sure). In 1959, Dean and Blattner were to work the Dodgers-Braves playoff, but a cigarette company was a sponsor and Dean had been criticizing tobacco on the air for years. So, the sponsor said Dean couldn't do it. Dean said that if anyone from the game of the week broadcast was on the air for the playoffs, he wouldn't come back the next season. Blattner didn't see that as his problem, but the sponsors decided they wouldn't buck Dean and told Blattner not to broadcast. Blattner then resigned, telling Smith that if he had stayed, he and Dean would have had tension because the whole incident would have loomed over them.

Ted Patterson's book and CD includes an excerpt from Dean making a guest appearance on a Royals broadcast with Blattner three months before Dean's death in 1974. They clearly were cordial on the air.

I'm really glad to see the announcer thread. I'll add this:

1. Howie Williams probably broadcast for them in 1952 and 1953 as well as 1951. Patterson has an ad from 1952 showing him as a Browns announcer and he ended up going to Baltimore with them for the first year in 1954, so it seems likely that he was there for the whole Veeck era.

2. Milo Hamilton worked with Blattner on TV in 1953. It was his first big job at age 26. Hamilton said something like, "I wasn't ready for the big leagues. But neither were the Browns."

3. Lindsey Nelson was offered a job with the Browns around 1951, but the pay was so low he couldn't have taken it if he wanted to.